[JudgeMental]

I was thinking about something earlier.  I'm not a coder, but perhaps someone who is can do something with this idea.

It would be interesting to have a bit of chance involved with your subsystems.  For example, once your weapons integrity gets below a certain point, other things than an occasional missfire take place.  Perhaps there is a small chance that another direct hit to the weapons system could detonate one or more missiles in your weapons bay, thus destroying your weapons subsystem, damaging (or destroying) your ship, and reducing the missiles in your inventory by the same amout of missiles that blew up.  Perhaps this event could be triggered by a chance factor when you try to fire a missile when at a certain damage level.

Likewise, the engines could have similar modifications.  They would be less touchy, but at high damage levels, using afterburners could be... dangerous, as they could overload, blow out your engines completely, and maybe even damage the ship slightly.

Well, this is just a start to my idea.  Take it, run with it, tear it to shreds, I don't care.  I just want it out here in case someone, hasn't thought of it, likes it, and wants to do something with it.

[Sesquipedalian]

Oooh, sounds like fun!

[diamondgeezer]

Yep, and it sounds complicated and fair bit of work too

Now, the afterburner thing is a good idea - I'm thinking a heat gague. Burners could be pushed beyond their design specs, at the risk of overheating, and damage would also cause overheating problems. If the overheat gague hits the top, your engines blow up and you need a repair ship (or if you're unlucky, a chaplain)

However, let us not forget that a weapon charge gague was discussed and quickly forgotten about, not too long ago. Which was a shame, as it was a sweet idea

[Stryke 9]

A temperature gauge could do it (give weapons a degree value, both for hitting armor and for firing, same for afterburners and maybe a couple other things, make it decrease at a certain rate over time if nothing new is happening, and if it gets up to the critical level your rockets start blowing up in your face when you fire them and your afterburner doesn't work (killing you because you fired up your afterburner might not work, just have a "safety" that keeps you from using it if you get too high up), and once it gets to a certain point you start losing HPs fast.

Fact, it could be set up like HPs, so that if a fighter has, say, 2500 hit points, that's 2500 degrees it can take total, with firing, say, a Prometheus adding 40 degrees, a Kayser 10, afterburners 500, a direct hit by a Prom 800, etc. , with the ship venting about 2% a second (poss. depending on your use of engines?), and once you get up to 90% stuff starts exploding.

It'd basically mean adding a whole new value to everything, and I don't know how complicated that would be, but it could be pretty cool.

[Black Wolf]

You'd have to be careful to explain the changes (in a training mission) before each campaign that uses them, and you'd also need to be careful that they don't simply appear to be random errors. Spoken, or at least flashing written  warnings on your HUD (eg. Weapons subsystem approaching critical.), or some other heat guage type things like DG suggested.

[Stryke 9]

Yeah, it'd have to show up on the HUD somehow, of course. Maybe as a bar alongside the weapon/engine charge ones.

And I think with this thing reverse compatibility would be all shot to hell, as old weapons and stuff wouldn't have a temperature value... There MIGHT be a way to work it into everything else (have it be a factor of the weapon damage value and the afterburner acceleration rate or something), but that'd be less fun and in the end not so easy to code as just a new value.

See, this is where a separate SCP release that isn't supposed to be backward-compatible would come in handy. There's all sorts of **** that we could do but would just plain **** up the old models and tables.

[Bobboau]

we can always just calculate something if the table entry isn't there, though I don't have much interest in this particular sub project, parseing code is quite simple, we would meary add an optional string for  (lets say) $heat dispersion: in the code just say if you see that string then get the value otherwise set it to (something like) hitpoints*max speed, you can make rather complex table settings (if you so desire, for backwards compatability) with little effort, makeing things backward compatable, is generaly easy you just give a new feature and when you're done testing it, wrap all your code in a test that checks to se if the modder wanted it (so $heat dispersion: could defalt to 0 and any code that uses it would just check to make sure the value is greater than that)

[diamondgeezer]

Bob... you're one of the most important people on this board, and I have nothing but respect for your abilities with FS, but please FOR THE LOVE OF GOD use punctuation...

[Stryke 9]

Sounds simpler to just stick the value in soon and then have someone manually insert heat values in all the old tables for distribution with the SCP.

[Anaz]

lol...this whole "heat" thing sounds almost exactly like the one for battletech & mechwarrior...

perhapse the weapon's heat value could be extrapolated from its damage?

[Stryke 9]

Nah, would just make it an added amount of damage, no fun, really.

Besides, it'd be cool to have heating lasers and ****. One minute you're cruisin', feeling fine, little bit of a bumpy ride and an odd humming noise, next thing you know your fuel system ignites under you.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
next thing you know your fuel system ignites under you.

We're not out of here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly home...

[kasperl]

what about a "reliability" factor, like in a flight sim. if it's a very low number, things will just starting to give up, like an engine going slower, weapons damaging, shields flickering for no reason, and that kinda stuff. it would really simulate a "duct tape" craft.

[Stryke 9]

That'd be something for another thread. But I imagine a set of Sexps simulating the effects of a leech gun/EMP for a few seconds could be arranged.

If you mean as a part of the heating thing... eh. Maybe. Seems overkill, particularly when there's other stuff that does just that.